Technology

The Best Laptop/Ultra Book – Dell XPS 13 9300. 2020 Edition.

Dell has revamped the XPS 13 this year though the last year was already really good. They completely redid it and they improved on a lot of features. But they actually made a few things less good.

Design and aesthetics of XPS 13

XPS 13 is incredibly nice-looking, its small, its compact & its lightweight. You will get two color variants.

1. Platinum Silver with Black carbon fiber palmrest.
2. Frost white with Alpine white composite fiber palmrest.

There’s something about the way that Dell does their carbon fiber, that is very unique. It’s soft to the touch, its durable, its inviting to use. A lot of people enjoy the way that the black carbon fiber feels on this device. The white model look really nice but they’re not as nice to use because they don’t have that soft touch material that the black carbon fiber does.

Ports

They included only two USB ports. One to the left and other to the right. 2019’s model had a third USB. There are devices out there like that 12-inch MacBook that only have a single port. But if you’re someone that connects a lot of devices to their laptop you’re gonna have to get some adapters.

There’s also a headphone jack on the left and an SD card slot or a micro SD card slot on the right. They’re actually missing the light indicator for battery so they used to have this button you could press to check on battery life. Now I don’t think people often relied on that button to check on the battery status of their device. It’s just something that’s existed on so many older XPS 13 devices it’s weird to see it gone.

Screen

One thing that is very unique or new this year is, you can open the device with one hand. It seems to be something that people wanted. The screen has also been changed. It is having 16 by 10 aspect ratio instead of the more traditional 16 by 9. It might seem just a little more vertical space, it’s a 13 point 4 inch screen this is a really nice aspect ratio for this type of device.

The 2020 model supports Windows hello so you can log into Windows with just your face biometrics. If you don’t want to use face ID you can also use your fingerprint sensor that’s at the top of the keyboard.

Keyboard

It’s a redesigned keyboard and they’ve tweaked a couple things for one the left and right keys are now full-size keys instead of those half keys from the 2019 model. You don’t hit the page up and page down by mistake. they got bigger keys than last year’s model, they’re responsive the key travel is nice.

The trackpad is also slightly bigger than it was last year. It’s not a huge trackpad. It’s appropriately sized for a 13-inch Ultrabook. The tracking is good, it’s got windows precision drivers. But the click, it’s different this year still feels solid.

Speakers

The speakers on this model ok. Over the years laptop manufacturers have ruined laptop speakers because they always market them with these fancy names to make people think that their crappy speakers actually sound good. This year these are actually good they’re way better than last year’s model and way better than the vast majority of Ultrabook speakers out there.

It’s because of wattage, these are 2 watt speakers instead of your standard like one or one and a half watt speakers. They are not as good as macbook speakers but i think that if you care about sound you won’t be disappointed by these.

Performance

Dell did a good job considering what’s going on here and a thin and light ultra book like this. It’s running 10th gen Intel chips these are similar in CPU performance to last your stuff but the graphical performance is noticeably better. It’s still not great for gaming, even something like overwatch not a particularly demanding game it doesn’t run all that well like it’s playable but it’s gonna stutter here and there.

Inside XPS 13

But performance on the whole is quite good and the thermal system is slightly improved compared to 2019 year’s model. So if you take a look at the inside there’s quite a few things that have changed but even the back panel has been upgraded a little.

It got the machined aluminum bottom panel. Inside it got two fans that are in a different position this year than they were in previous years. They’re now on the left and right.

The Wi-Fi card is on board you can’t replace that unfortunately. It’s a killer Wi-Fi card, it’s based on Intel’s hardware but it’s got some software stuff do you have to finagle with. The RAM is soldered on can’t replace that but the SSD thank goodness is still replaceable.

The SSD they include is from SK Hynix but you can easily upgrade that if you want. On the left and right antennas are placed. They just have them out in the open on this particular model.

Battery

Battery is 52 watt hours, they haven’t changed the size but you will get a comfortable 10 hours on this. If you get a higher resolution screen it’s probably less but 10 hours on the 1080p model without a touchscreen.

The headphone jack assembly is separate from the motherboard instead of a jack that’s just built into the motherboard. It’s the separate assembly that sits inside the bottom panel and then when you close it up there’s pogo pins that connect it to the motherboard.

Price

XPS 13 2020 model starts at 999 dollars but that thing is 4 GB of RAM.

They did a really good job on 2020 year’s XPS 13. They did a whole bunch of improvements, it is really nice looking machine.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/laptops/xps-13-9300-laptop/spd/xps-13-9300-laptop?~ck=bt